Another Blow to Pollsters After Trump Defies Expectations

Though America’s Presidential election still hangs in the balance, to be determined by a relative handful of votes across Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and other swing states, veteran observers can draw a few conclusions with certainty. First, the Republican party has proven far more resilient than analysts assumed. Second, public opinion polling, at least with respect to presidential candidates, has taken a further blow to its credibility. Despite fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and a low approval rating, President Trump appears to have earned almost six million more votes than in 2016. Meanwhile, far from correcting for their errors in 2016, the accuracy of several major polling firms deteriorated further.
 
REPUBLICAN TURNOUT DEFIES EXPECTATIONS 
 
Although the final result remains to be tallied and we cannot say with certainty whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden will be certified as President, it is clear that President Trump and the Republican party far exceeded expectations. Despite an ongoing pandemic which has led to a 33 per cent drop in GDP, and a presidential approval rating that averaged 40 percent — “the lowest in modern American history” — President Trump improved on his 2016 performance by nearly six million aggregate votes. 
 
Of particular note, President Trump’s performance improved markedly with racial and ethnic minorities. Despite consistent criticism for his handling of race relations, Trump appears to have substantially increased his vote-share among Hispanic Americans, winning crucial Hispanic-majority districts that voted for Clinton in 2016 and earningnearly 18 percent of the male African-American vote. His support in the Muslim-American and LGBT communities rose as well, from 2016, to 28 percent and 35 percent respectively. 
 
The trend continues down-ballot, with respect to Republican Senate candidates. Around election day, renowned statistician Nate Silver assessed that Democrats had a 75 percent probability of taking control of the Senate. He gave Democrats a 68 percent chance of winning GOP-held seats in North Carolina, a 63 percent chance in Georgia, and a 59 percent chance in Maine. As of this writing, the Republican senators in all those states appear to have defeated their Democratic challengers. While Democrats were projected to gain at least 15 seats in the House, so far they have lost a net of 10. In state legislatures and gubernatorial races across the U.S., the projected Democratic realignment failed to materialize, leaving the Republican party dominant in wide swaths of the country.  
 
THE BIGGEST LOSER: POLLS 
 
While a final winner has yet to be determined, it is already clear that both state and national polls are the most decisive loser. Throughout 2020, Joe Biden held an average lead in national polling over Donald Trump of oversevent points. And yet, as of this writing, his lead over Donald Trump in the popular vote has been reduced to a mere 2 points. While pollsters in 2016 were careful to explain that, despite failing to detect Donald Trump’s lead in certain critical swing states, national pollsters correctly predicted Hillary Clinton’s two-point lead in the national popular vote, with Tuesday’s 5-point miss, their 2020 performance appears considerably worse. 
 
On the state level, matters are even more lopsided. In almost every swing state, President Trump and the GOP outperformed their polls by large margins. In Ohio, Trump exceeded his Real Clear Politics average by seven points. In Wisconsin and Iowa, he beat the average by six points. And in the must-win states of Texas and Florida, he outdid his polls by 5 points.
 
Far from correcting for their mistakes in 2016 — largely attributed to pollsters’ failure to anticipate the surge in turnout by college-educated white voters and weight their samples accordingly — these flaws in polling appear to have deepened still further. As one analyst put it, “If polling doesn’t work, then we are flying blind.”